The letter of a lost soul
by Hanyou-Kyo
Summary: It was cold. Snow fell like delicate white petals on the breeze. There was a letter, old and faded and worn with age. Inside of it was the story, the life of one small boy. Narrated by one Quillsh Wammy. One shot.


**Kyo-kun here! This is a one shot about Watari's memoirs, inspired by the video,**

**What I left behind- Whammy boy's tribute by TrueSuccessor. It's a fantastic video that I highly recommend you watch if you get the chance! **

**Enjoy! ^_^**

* * *

><p>It was cold. My breath came out in wisps of grey, circling above my head like a ghostly spirit. The snow was piled high outside of the shed window, a pattern of frost crawling across the windowpane like silver spiders. The moon glared at me, hanging like a perfect pearl in the sky.<p>

"Are you sure this is a good idea?"

I whirled around, illuminating my friend's figure with the pale glow of my torch. He looked scared, skin pale, and blue eyes wide.

"Don't be such a baby, you set up the door so that we'll know if anyone's coming right?"

He nodded weakly.

"Then there you go, unless you suddenly lost your talent for engineering then we're perfectly safe. Now be quiet, there's a lot of stuff to sort through."

He nodded again, and then dug into the heaps of paper piled all around. We searched for hours, hording papers, reading through them, and putting them in separate piles. The soft light of our torches was the only comfort we had in the dark gloom of night, spilling like golden honey over the damp floor.

My eyes became tired, misted with dust and a hard crust. My friend yawned.

"What are we looking for exactly?" he asked.

"Anything that relates back to him." I grunted in answer.

I heard him sigh. "You're never going to find anything, he's a myth and you know it."

I bit my lip. It wasn't a myth, of that I was sure. He just _couldn't _be a myth. I'd spent my whole life listening to the tales, to the wonderful tales that sent me spiralling into a land of sleep. I would prove it to all of them.

We carried on through the night, the stars watching over us all the while. My fingers went numb in the end, and the tip of my nose and ears turned to ice. I was all but ready to throw in the towel, to just give up, when a single brown envelope caught my eye. It was faded and old, sealed with a wax stamp of some sort. My curiosity flared, and before I even realised what I was doing, the envelope was in my hands.

"What's that?" my friend asked.

I sat down, leaning again the wooden wall. He sat down besides me. Wordlessly I broke the seal, and pulled out the paper inside. The paper was white and crisp, with neat black handwriting scrawled across it. I set it in between us and pointed my torch directly on the paper. Then we began to read.

_Dear reader,_

_Time is not on my side, and I feel that my weary heart can no longer bare the burden of knowing what is about to transcend alone. Whether or not someone will take heed of this old man's scribbling is of no concern to me, I simply feel it necessary to leave behind some sort of record so that a life will be remembered. Not of my life, however. I have lived a good many years and in doing so have come across countless friends and made countless memories. No, I have no doubt that I will be remembered for a time at least. _

_It is him that this document concerns._

_He who has done more good then one can possibly imagine, even if those good deeds were sometimes accompanied by bad ones. He who was as bright as a button from the first time I met him, shining brighter then any spark I have ever encountered. He who at such an early age had already experienced so much heartache. He who I watched grow, who I cooked and cleaned after, who I cared for and came to love, my son. My son in every way but blood._

_L Lawliet._

_The man behind the letter, the boy genius whom thwarted all those that got in his way, the peculiar boy who I came to think of as my own flesh and blood. The great detective L._

_No one will know, of course, the boy behind that exterior. The strange boy with ashen eyes and raven hair, the uncaring, hunched way in which he walked, and that particular little smile of his. No one will know of that, simply because they do not care. All they worried about were Lawliet's cases, he himself was of no concern to them. Especially since Lawliet was always one on his own, he did not act according to what was considered proper in society. I know that better then anyone. It was a challenge bringing him up, not matter what I tried he always found some clever way of escaping learning to belong._

_In the end I didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise, he had been through so much already, and he always completed the tasks given to him without complaint. As long as the tasks were interesting, anything he considered boring was always a no go for Lawliet. _

_I recall countless occasions in which he refused to do anything, stating it was not worth his time. Though I too had clever little tricks to use against Lawliet. Sweets were always a good way of convincing him to do anything, I still haven't met another human being to this day who loved sweets more than little Lawliet. His favourite was strawberry shortcake of course, it was my mother's recipe that she left to me upon her death. He always loved it more than anything else._

_I didn't always love Lawliet of course. In the beginning he was more of a burden, a strange child I had gotten lumped with. He was arrogant and stubborn, and very hard to live with. But over time he won me over. In fact I think I remember the very day our relationship changed. It was a Tuesday, and I am never in a very good mood on Tuesdays. Lawliet was in the parlour, I had left him there with a puzzle of some sort followed by a very thick book, hoping it would be enough to keep him occupied. _

_It wasn't._

_I found him rooting through the cupboards not ten minutes later, a guilty strawberry protruding from his mouth. My vision seemed to flash red at that point, and all of my anger came pouring out like ember flames. I shouted at him, cheeks flushed; _

"_You ungrateful little brat! Why don't you do something useful for a change and _find _some strawberries, instead of stuffing your face constantly. You're lucky to be here in the first place, your mother would be ashamed of you!"_

_The look on Lawliet's face haunts me to this day. He was never a very expressive child, but the pain and misery written across his features at that point was undeniable. He disappeared into the house for the rest of the day. I was feeling quite satisfied, if not a little guilty, and so left him to his own devices. But around tea time I began to worry. I went looking for him, but he was no where to be seen. Not in a single room or hiding spot within the house. I ran into the back kitchen panting, and found the backdoor open. _

_Without a second thought I dove into the cold, snow up to my heels. I called him and searched, until finally I found him. He was crouched at the bottom of the garden, barefoot and shivering. He was staring down at the frozen patch of vegetables and fruit I grew in the winter. The strawberry patch. _

_I didn't waste a moment running over to him, shaking off my coat and wrapping it around him. His lips were blue. When I asked him just what in the seven hells he was doing, all I got was a hallow look and the answer;_

"_Trying to do something useful." _

_That night I apologised for the first time in my life to someone under the age of ten, and he did the same. His behaviour didn't change of course, he was still as blank and uninterested as always. But he _tried, _and that was all that mattered. I made him strawberry shortcake that night, we shared it together._

_After that Lawliet developed rapidly, I could barely keep up with the lad. He became interested in crime and law, he loved the way rules bent in some cases and in others they were solid as rock. He loved finding a criminal with nothing but statements and strands of DNA to go on. That was when he became L._

_I won't go into too much detail concerning his job, there is already enough information about the world's greatest detective. What I am concerned in recording is Lawliet's life._

_And so its inevitable that we come to the Whammy House. No matter what anyone says Lawliet was always concerned with the Whammy children, particularly after the failed grooming of A and B. So he took an extra interest in his three possible successors. He met only one of them who knew of his identity, and that was _

_M__ihael Keehl. Oh he's a hot headed one that Mihael, his brashness outweighing even his intelligence. Lawliet met the other two successors, but did not tell them of his identity. Though, he told me later on, that he had a strong suspicion they figured it out._

_The years went by at a slow, satisfying place. We traveled to countless countries, and in the end Lawliet knew more languages then I thought was humanly possible. The cases L took on never lasted long, that marvelous mind of his cracked them as easily as nuts. There was the Los Angeles BB murder case of course, it almost stumped him, but in the end not even Lawliet's successor could defeat him. No one ever could._

_That was until the Kira case. It was inevitable Lawliet would become interested in the case, and in the allusive enigma of Kira. Kira called to Lawliet like a kindred spirit, Kira was someone he could relate to, someone who could challenge Lawliet in a way he had never known was possible. Kira was Lawliet on the flip side of a coin, the opponent at the opposite side of the chessboard. Their meeting was always inevitable._

_And it was to always be Lawliet's doom and final glory. He figured the whole case out in a matter of no time at all really, it was just the matter of gathering evidence. Kira was tidy, infuriatingly so. It made the chase all the more invigorating for Lawliet. Light Yagami had more in common then he would have liked to think with Lawliet._

_The added addition of a supernatural being such as the Shinigami was a surprise, but not a shock. Lawliet and I had dealt with Beyond Birthday after all. The death note itself was an interesting artifact, one I would of liked to study in more detail. But as I said, time is short._

_Light Yagami is planning something with Misa Amane at this very moment, and Lawliet has already confided in me that he feels our time is growing rapidly short. He won't run though, he won't allow me to strike Light Yagami off, because he feels it wouldn't be his win. He tells me that even if he does die, the successors he groomed will ensure his over all victory._

_Lawliet is too stubborn._

_My life is of no concern to me, I have had a good long life. But Lawliet, my boy, has only just begun his. There are so many things he will never do, will never experience. It may be my own fancy specking here, but I had hoped someday he might find someone to settle down with. I wouldn't of minded a grandchild or two. But, as I said that may just be my own fancy taking over. _

_Lawliet will not yield to my wishes, he will not yield to anyone's wishes but his own. That's one of his more deadly faults. His biggest fault however, which I am partially to blame for, is his greatest weakness._

_Lawliet never grew up._

_And now he never will._

_No one will remember him. His funeral will be simple, with few, if nobody gathered around his grave. When people pass that lump of cold stone, they will not know of the amazing things he accomplished, the delicate, complicated personality he possessed. _

_He will be forgotten, only his legend will live on. Though that too, I'm afraid, will eventually wear away into dust._

_So I leave this letter in the tiny hope that someone, no matter who, will read it. That they will see what I saw. Just a boy who, like everyone else had his fair share of faults. A boy who never grew up, a boy who put away more sweets then any other human being, a boy who could calculate even the most complicated of problems in a matter of micro-seconds. The world's greatest detective, but my greatest joy._

_My Lawliet._

_Yours sincerely _

_Quillsh Wammy_

The paper was shaking in my hands. "This is…" I began in a hushed whisper.

My friend shuffled closer to me, eyes aglow with excitement. "It's what you've been looking for dummy! I can't believe it, he was real!" he exclaimed.

I swallowed. He was right, I had found it. I should have been happy, elated even. However, I found myself feeling suddenly quite sickly. There was a worrying, squirming feeling niggling away in my gut. A feeling I couldn't quite place.

"Come on we have to go show Peter! He's going to be amazed by this." He cried, pulling me to my feet.

He tugged me all the way to the house through the knee deep snow, and I allowed him to. My mind was racing, trying to put a name to the feeling rushing through my veins. We were suddenly running through the wooden paneled halls. We burst into Peter's office without knocking, to find him seated behind his desk, talking to a man. The man was very tall but slightly stooped, his hair was as white as the snow circling outside. His eyes, when he turned to us, were black as coal.

"Ah, S, J it's good you're here, this is…"

The white haired man looked us over, and then uttered under his breath in an almost inaudible voice, "Ryuzaki."

I knew then the name of the feeling squirming away inside of me.

Fear.

And why was I afraid?

History has a habit of repeating itself.


End file.
